How does a soft decline work?
When the issuer or provider refuses an authorization, it returns a response code. Some codes describe a condition that can change: 05 do not honor, 51 insufficient funds, 61 exceeds amount limit, 91 issuer unavailable and 96 system malfunction. In Europe, issuers also return a soft decline that asks for strong customer authentication, which can be resolved by retrying with 3-D Secure. Codes vary between providers, so platforms map each provider’s codes to a common soft or hard category.
Why do soft declines matter for approval rate?
Soft declines are the part of the decline pool that can be recovered. As an illustrative example: of 10,000 declines in a month, 6,000 are soft. If 15% of those succeed when cascaded to a second route, 900 payments are recovered that would otherwise be lost. The recovery rate varies by code, so it is worth measuring separately for each one.
How do you tell a soft decline from a hard decline?
By the response code, and by what the code says about the card. A soft decline describes a temporary state or a risk decision that another acquirer, another time or extra authentication could change. A hard decline describes the card itself: lost, stolen, closed or invalid. Some providers return generic codes for both, so code mapping needs regular review against real outcomes.
Where does Omno use it?
When a provider rejects the request or is unavailable, Omno sends the payment to the next PSP in the routing rule. The routing-decision log records the original code and the result of each attempt, so recovery can be measured per code and per route.